Health-foods, health-corsets, health-boots, the deeply serious
consideration of how to eat, on which side to sleep, profound
examination of whether mutton or lamb were the more digestible
flesh,--these were her occupations,--and two or three years before her
panic about her health had been made worse by the discovery of an aortic
stenosis, of which an over-frank doctor had thought it best to inform
her. When I saw her she had been three years married, was childless,
and, between the real cardiac disease and her own anxieties about it,
had driven herself into a state of great physical debility and a mental
condition approaching delusional insanity.
A too restricted diet, lacking both in variety and appetizingness, had
had its usual result of upsetting digestion and destroying desire for
food. Even with the small amounts which she ate she considered it
necessary to chew so carefully and to feed herself so slowly that from
one hour to an hour and a half was used for each meal. The heart,
under-nourished, beat feebly, there was constant slight albuminuria with
evidences of congested kidneys, and she could only rest in a semi-erect
position.
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